Ella Enchanted

chapter 8

HATTIE DIDN'T know about Lucinda and the curse, but she understood I always had to follow her orders. After I rubbed dust in her face, all she did was smile.

The smile meant that dust weighed little in the balance of her power.

I retreated to a corner of the coach and gazed out the window.

Hattie hadn't ordered me not to take the necklace back again. What if I lifted it over her large head? Or what if I yanked it off her neck? It would be better broken than owned by her.

I tried. I told my arms to move, told my hands to grasp. But the curse wouldn't let me. If someone else had ordered me to take it back, I would have had to.

But I couldn't will myself to reclaim it. So I made myself look at it, to become accustomed to the sight. While I stared, Hattie stroked the chain, gloating.

In a few minutes her eyes closed. Her mouth fell open, and she began to snore.

Olive crossed the carriage to sit next to me. "I want a present to show we're friends too," she said.

"Why don't you give me a gift instead?"

The furrows in her forehead deepened. "No. You give me."

An order. "What would you like?" I asked.

"I want money. Give me money."

As he'd promised, Father had given me a purse of silver KJs. I reached into my carpetbag and pulled out a coin. "Here you are. Now we're friends."

She spat on the coin and rubbed it to make it shine. "We're friends," she agreed. She crossed back to her former seat and brought the coin close to her eyes to study it.

I looked at the snoring Hattie. She was probably dreaming of ways to order me about. I looked at Olive, who was running the edge of the KJ over her forehead and down her nose. I began to long for finishing school. At least there they wouldn't be my only companions.

In a few minutes Olive joined Hattie in slumber. When I was certain both of them were soundly asleep, I dared to fetch Mandy's other present, the book of fairy tales, out of my bag. I turned away from the two of them, to hide the book and to catch the light from the carriage window.

When I opened it, instead of a fairy tale, I found an illustration of Mandy! She was dicing a turnip. Next to the turnip was the chicken I had watched her pluck that morning. She was crying. I had suspected she was fighting back tears when she hugged me.

The page blurred because my eyes filled with tears too. But I refused to cry in front of Hattie and Olive, even if they were asleep.

If Mandy had been in the coach with me, she would have hugged me and I could have cried as long as I liked. She would have patted my back and told me---

No. Those thoughts would make me cry. If Mandy were here, she'd tell me why it would be big, bad magic to turn Hattie into a rabbit. And I'd wonder again what fairies were good for.

That helped. I checked to make sure they were still sleeping; then I examined the next page. It showed a room that probably was in King Jerrold's castle, because Char was there and the crest of Kyrria was painted on the wall above a tapestry. Char was talking to three of the soldiers who had been in the ogres'

guard at the menagerie.

I puzzled about the meaning. Maybe an explanation would follow. I turned the page and found two more illustrations, neither one of Char or soldiers.

On the verso was a map of Frell. There was our manor, bearing the legend, "Sir Peter of Frell." My fingers traced the route to the old castle and on to the menagerie. There was the south road out of Frell, the road we were on now, far beyond the map's boundaries, far beyond the manor of Sir Peter of Frell.

The right-hand illustration showed Father's coach, followed by three mule-drawn wagons loaded with goods for trade. Father sat atop the coach with the driver, who was plying his whip. Father leaned into the wind and grinned.

What would the book show me next?

A real fairy tale this time, "The Shoemaker and the Elves." In this version, though, each elf had a personality, and I came to know them better than the shoemaker. And I finally understood why the elves disappeared after the shoemaker made clothes for them. They went away to help a giant rid herself of a swarm of mosquitoes, too small for her to see. Although the elves left a thank you note for the shoemaker, he put his coffee cup down on it, and it stuck to the cup's damp bottom.

The story made sense now.

"Your book must be fascinating. Let me see it," Hattie said.

I jumped. If she took this from me too, I'd kill her. The book got heavier as I handed it over.

Her eyes widened as she read. "You enjoy this? 'The Life Cycle of the Centaur Tick'?" She turned pages. "'Gnomish Silver Mining in Hazardous Terrain'?"

"Isn't it interesting?" I said, my panic subsiding. "You can read for a while. If we're going to be friends, we should have the same interests."

"You can share my interests, dear." She returned the book.

OUR JOURNEY taught me what to expect from Hattie.

At the inn on our first night, she informed me I had taken the space in their carriage that would otherwise have been occupied by their maid.

"But we shan't suffer, because you can take her place." She cocked her head to one side. "No, you are almost noble. It would be an insult to make a servant of you. You will be my lady-in-waiting, and I shall share you with my sister sometimes. Ollie, is there something Ella can do to help you?"

"No! I can dress and undress myself," Olive said defiantly.

"No one said you can't." Hattie sat on the bed we were all to share. She lifted her feet. "Kneel down and take my slippers off for me, Ella. My toes ache."

Without comment I removed them. My nose filled with the ripe smell of her feet. I carried the slippers to the window and tossed them out.

Hattie yawned. "You've only made extra work for yourself. Go down and fetch them."

Olive rushed to the window. "Your slippers fell into a bucket of slops!"

I had to carry the stinking slippers back to our room, but Hattie had to wear them until she was able to get fresh ones from her trunk. After that, she thought more carefully about her commands.

At breakfast the next morning she pronounced the porridge inedible. "Don't eat it, Ella. It will make you sick." She loaded her spoon with oatmeal.

Steam rose from the bowl before me, and I caught the scent of cinnamon.

Mandy always put cinnamon in her porridge too.

"Why are you eating it if it's bad?" Olive asked her sister. "I'm hungry."

"Yours looks all right. I'm eating mine even though it's vile" -- her tongue licked a speck of cereal off the corner of her mouth -- "because I need nourishment to take charge on our journey."

"You're not in ch--" Olive began.

"You don't fancy your porridge, miss?" The innkeeper sounded worried.

"My sister's stomach is queasy," Hattie said. "You may take her bowl away."

"I'm not her sister," I said as the innkeeper disappeared into the kitchen.

Hattie laughed, scraping her spoon around her empty bowl for the last remnants of porridge.

The innkeeper was back with a plate of thick brown bread studded with nuts and raisins. "Perhaps this will tempt the lass's stomach," he said.

I managed to take a big bite before a lady at the next table called him away.

"Put it down, Ella." Hattie broke off a corner of the bread and tasted it. "It's much too rich."

"Rich food is good for me," Olive said, reaching across the table.

Between them my breakfast disappeared in four bites.

That swallow of bread was the last food I had on our three-day trip, except for Tonic. Hattie would have deprived me of it too, except she sampled it first.

And then I relished her nauseated expression when she swallowed.